Chocolate Banana Caramel Cupcake

So for my birthday I had these!

They turned out pretty good, all things considered. At first I went into my birthday thinking I was going to make a chocolate peppermint filled cupcake. Sounded super yummy. But I made the pudding filling, it didn't taste right. I tried several things to try to improve it, but it didn't work. So I came up with this option from combining a little from several different recipes I had looked through.

First I just made a batch of chocolate cupcakes from a box, you could make them from scratch. Then I let them cool and then took the centers out so I could fill them. I used the idea from here to cut out the center.

For the filling I used a small box of sugar free instant banana cream pie pudding and made it according to the box. Then before I let it set up I added a small container of of cool whip. Then I stirred in about 1/4 c. of caramel topping. Then I put it in the fridge and let it set up. When it came close to time for cupcakes I cut up 2 bananas pretty small and stirred them in. Then I put the filling in a ziplock bag and filled the middle of the cupcakes and then put the tops back on.

For the frosting, I just put a big frosting tip on a ziplock bag and then filled it half with vanilla frosting and half with chocolate frosting. Once I piped the frosting on I drizzled some caramel on top and garnished with bananas.